UCR Moves to Dissolve Emeritus Status of Retired Professor

The University of California, Riverside School of Business, Anderson Graduate School of Management (AGSM), has had its share of accusations such as questionable hiring practices, retention of women and minorities, abuse of power, and a waste of taxpayers’ funds. And, in the school’s latest battle, Dr. Sarkis Joseph Khoury charges that the school’s administration has a long history wherein the “seeds of corruption” run deep.

Over the past 20-years, Dr. Khoury has fought the UC system and won. In one settlement agreement with the school, the creation of a nurturing environment clause was implemented. But last year, Dr. Khoury was placed on involuntary leave during the pendency of two sets of disciplinary charges against him and states that, “the UC system is set up to protect administrators while persecuting politically incorrect faculty.”

In a letter from Executive Vice Chancellor, Dallas Rabenstein, he states: “I have determined that there is a strong risk that your continued assignment to regular duties as a faculty member or presence on the UCR campus will cause immediate and serious harm to the University community.”

Labeled by some at the university as a “trouble maker,” Dr. Khoury states that the assault on him began when he brought investigators on campus to review the hiring practices under the Target of Opportunity Program (TOP) – a program that helps fund salaries for women and minority hires. Dr. Khoury states: “I discovered that illegal actions were being taken to hire the wife of an employee under the TOP program. African Americans, otherwise qualified were being frozen from consideration.”

In an unprecedented move by the UC, Dr. Khoury was demoted to associate professor from tenured full professor. A sign, Dr. Khoury felt was in retaliation for his charges against the UC. “It’s a witch hunt,” said Dr. Khoury. The university maintains that Dr. Khoury was censured because he received outside income during a sabbatical, a violation of UC policy.

The Superior Court Judge in Riverside later reinstated him to full professor after a ruling.

Dr. Khoury also charges that in the UC’s history, he has been the first faculty to ever be investigated over matters that went back several years in which he was vindicated; the first faculty to be frozen out of departmental membership; the first faculty member ever to have waited over ten years without receiving a merit increase; the first faculty member to be evicted from his office and have his research money taken away from him; and the first ever to be sued by the Regents based on false documentation and false claims over alleged violations of sabbatical leaves.

Dr. Khoury states that he is fighting because if the UC can do this to him, what’s to stop them from doing it to others. “The same thing they’re doing to me,” he says, “is what they did to Dr. Rodgers.”

Referring to UCR Professor Dr. Waymond Rodgers, the only tenured African American business professor in the University of California system who was offered the prestigious Franklin Fellowship in August, 2010 to have the university abruptly cancel his approved sabbatical blocking him from taking the Washington D.C. based assignment.

The UC earlier this year agreed to drop its investigation of Professor Rodgers and restore his rescinded sabbatical, allowing him to take the fellowship.

Dr. Khoury officially retired from the UC system this month. But this week, the UC Regents will meet in Riverside and one item of discussion will be whether to fire Dr. Khoury and deny him his emeritus retirement.

At press time, calls to the vice chancellor’s office were not returned.

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